“That’s right. Just like that, gentle, like you’re putting a baby to bed.”
Hazel laughs. She sounds so much like her mother that Pauline’s heart nearly stands still. Sometimes, absent these reminders, Pauline can hardly believe that she shares any blood at all with this creature, so different from the girl of ten who visited three years ago—this girl who is now tan of skin, long of limb, throwing out “y’alls” and “I reckons” and “fixin’ tos” like they’re trap ropes. But then Hazel laughs, or tilts her head in a certain way, or crosses her ankles just so, and Pauline sees Nicole’s genetic stamp all over her.
“There you go,” says Pauline approvingly. “We’re going to put these ones all in a row, just like this, see? Now unfold every otherone back in on itself. And put the long one here, perpendicular to the others.”
It’s a blueberry pie, with blueberries from Weskeag in Thomaston. Pauline sees Hazel struggling to place the second strip of dough, putting it too close to the first. She sticks the tip of her tongue out when she’s concentrating, just like Nicole used to do. “Here now,” Pauline says, showing her. “Like this.” Some people just throw the top piece of pie dough on top of the pie, cut a few slits, and call it a day. But not Pauline. In Pauline’s opinion a lattice crust is the only way to go. “Now watch, I’m going to teach you how to make an egg wash. Anybody ever taught you about egg wash on a lattice crust?”
“No, ma’am.”
“You don’t need to call me ma’am. Grandma will do just fine.”
“Got it,” says Hazel. “Grandma.”
Pauline mixes the beaten eggs with a little bit of water. “This is what’s going to give it a glossy finish.” She shows Hazel how to brush it on carefully, not letting too much of the wash get on each dip of the pastry brush. Pauline’s pastry brush is old, with some of the bristles sticking out like a person with bed head. Still she’d no sooner replace it than she’d replace her own big toe. When that’s done, she washes her hands and wipes them on the dish towel on the counter. Hazel does the same, then slides her hand—warm, still a little damp, with long graceful fingers, inside Pauline’s.
“Grandma?” she says. “I love visiting here with y’all. I wish I could stay longer.”
Pauline feels an inconvenient tear take shape in each eye. There’s something grandkids can do to your heart nobody else can. She holds on to the hand for a long second before releasing it, giving the pie one last check, and sliding it into the oven. “Y’allthis andy’allthat,” she says. “You sound like a southern girl.”
Hazel’s eyes go very wide and deep like a great round pool Pauline could wade into. “But that’s what I am, Grandma. A southern girl, born and bred.”
Pauline’s heart feels like it’s been put in a paper shredder which has then been switched on, without a thought in the world for what might be inside. She remembers Nicole’s little starfish hands, slapping at the bathwater. She remembers Billy holding up a live lobster to her and Nicole reaching out to touch it, then pulling her hands back away from the claws, shrieking, Billy saying, “He won’t hurt you none, Nicole. He won’t hurt you none,” and all of them laughing. Now that it’s over, Pauline remembers Nicole’s childhood as though it was yesterday, every piece of it scored in her memory like marks along the trunk of a tree. She remembers moments in the lives of her sons too, but, yes, it’s different with a daughter. It just is.
There was that old dog they had once, Gus, with the long hound’s ears, soft, like pieces of silk, and more patience than four saints put together. Nicole used to play with those ears, lying down next to the poor thing and spreading the ear across her face like it was a blanket. They don’t have a dog now, but sometimes at the Fitzgeralds’ house she watches the kids with Otis and she thinks about Nicole. Some way, somehow, it seems like a corner of her mind is always thinking about Nicole. She watches Matty and Hazel too, from the house when they’re out on the rocks, for hours, sitting next to each other, not touching, but talking, Hazel with her knees pulled up to her chest.
Pauline sets the timer on the oven and thinks about how happy it will make Billy, this pie, when he comes back from the airport with Nicole, and how he’ll ask to have a slice of it before supper, and how Pauline will think about saying no but in the end, of course, she’ll cut him a slice, because he works hard, out there on the water all day, and neither of them is getting any younger, and so why the hell not eat pie before supper if you’re lucky enough to have a working mouth, and a piece of pie to put into it?
“How long will it take?” asks Hazel.
“Fifty minutes or so. We’ll check it in twenty-five, maybe put a shield around the edges then, so they don’t get too brown. I’ll show you. You want a glass of lemonade while we’re waiting? Maybe play a game of gin rummy?”
“Yes!”
Pauline takes the pitcher from the refrigerator and Hazel fetches the glasses from the cabinet and Pauline thinks about the first day she was here when Hazel asked if they had any sweet tea in the refrigerator. Sweet tea! Of all things.
Hazel drinks half her lemonade in one gulp, and when she puts the glass down she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and Pauline thinks about handing her a paper towel but decides to let it go, and then Hazel says, “Matty told me that Mama and his mom used to be friends.”
“Used to be, that’s right. A long time ago.”
“But they’re not anymore?”
Pauline opens the drawer in the kitchen that holds all manner of things, rubber bands and extra scissors and Scotch tape and buttons and spare change. Organized chaos, is what this drawer is. She extracts from the drawer the deck of cards, worn soft by years of playing, and begins to shuffle them. She taught Hazel gin rummy her second day here—the girl didn’t know a single card game! Pauline couldn’t believe it. “Not anymore,” she says. She deals out the cards, ten each.
“Why not?”
Pauline concentrates first on grouping her cards and then she says, “Oh, lots of reasons. People grow apart. You think your life is going in one direction, and then—wham! Bam! Off it goes in another.”
“Matty says they got in a fight about a boy.” Hazel giggles. “Did you know about that?”
“Oh, sure,” says Pauline. “I knew about that, all right. Your go.”
“So what happened? With the boy?”
What happened, thinks Pauline, is what always happens—what’s been happening since the beginning of time. What happened is that the rich girl won. What happened was Nicole crying in Pauline’s lap—sobbing, really, brokenhearted in the way you can really only be when you’re sixteen and think you’re in love. Or maybe Nicolewasin love. Sixteen-year-olds are allowed to be in love, same as anybody else. There’s no law against it.
“Nothing worth talking about,” says Pauline. “Just silly teenage stuff. And it’s hard being human.” She considers the ace Hazel has just discarded and decides to take it. She thinks about Marilyn in the hospital bed in her front room. “It’s hard having all those feelings, not always knowing where to put them.”
“I don’t think it’s hard being human,” says Hazel. “I think it’s nice.”
